Search This Blog

Saturday, December 21, 2013

The White House responded on Friday to international media
reports claiming that the National Security Agency intercepted the emails of
senior Israeli government officials.

"We are not going to comment publicly on every specific
alleged intelligence activity, but as a matter of policy we have made clear
that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all
nations," National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan told
Haaretz.

The Prime Minister's Office did not respond to the reports,
according to which U.S. intelligence surveillance eavesdropped on email
addresses at the offices of the prime minister and the minister of defense in
early 2009. At the time, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, respectively, headed those
posts.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said on Friday
that even if the details of the report were true, the email address in question
was a public one used by the premier's office.

"The chance that security- or intelligence-related
damage was done by this interception is zero," Olmert's office said.
"It should be emphasized that relations between Israel and the U.S. in
those years were excellent, and the intelligence cooperation was comprehensive,
detailed, and as close as never before."

Sources close to Olmert said that at the time, whatever
information that was not passed on through dialogue between the two states was
always ironed out between former President George W. Bush and Olmert. "The
information that Israel shared and received from the U.S. at the time by far
surpassed anything that that could have been revealed to the Americans by
tracking that email address," they said.

Sources in the office of the current minister of defense,
Moshe Ya'alon, said that the minister's email mentioned in Friday's reports
serves to connect the office with the outside world, and has no special
significance. "It's an address just like the Knesset's email
address,"" they said. "Any citizen can use it and the
correspondence is not classified."

A senior security official said that the minister of defense
and his people are aware of the likely possibility that they are under
surveillance by foreign intelligence agencies. "We take into account that
there is eavesdropping," the official said, "whether it's on cellular
phones or in hotel rooms while on visits abroad."